Saturday, September 3, 2016

Trump's Electoral Map Paths to 270 Are Impossibly Narrow

Labor Day traditionally sounds a gun that starts the general election in earnest — vacations are over, kids are back in school, and voters are finally tuning in to a presidential race that’s competitive coming out of the party conventions.

This year feels very different.

With two prolonged primary seasons, two deeply polarizing nominees, and two conventions that were moved up by a month (from late August to late July), voters have been unable to escape the shadow cast by a bizarre and historic race for the White House. And with the GOP nominee trailing badly in nearly every national and battleground-state poll, conventional wisdom has jelled earlier than in any cycle since 1996: The election is already over.

The question this Labor Day, then, isn’t who has the pole position heading into the home stretch, but whether Donald Trump has any realistic path to defeating Hillary Clinton on November 8.